Foliar plant care is so easy!
Use a Dramm Can, the Perfect Foliar Machine!

You can easily make this tea! A handful of castings, a handful to a cup of compost, handful of manure, stir and let them soak overnight in a bucket. In the morning, swoosh it around in the bucket one more time, let it settle, then pour the top liquid into your watering can, the one with the up turning rose. Add a Tablespoon Fish Emulsion/Kelp, mix, and drench your plants in the morning! Yum!

Magnesium is critical for seed germination and the production of chlorophyll, fruit, and nuts. Magnesium helps strengthen cell walls and improves plants’ uptake of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur. Magnesium deficiency in the soil may be one reason your tomato leaves yellow between the leaf veins late in the season and fruit production slows down.

Sulfur, a key element in plant growth, is critical to production of vitamins, amino acids (therefore protein), and enzymes. Sulfur is probably the oldest known pesticide in current use. It can be used for disease control (e.g., powdery mildews, rusts, leaf blights, and fruit rots), and pests like mites, psyllids and thrips. Sulfur is nontoxic to mammals, but may irritate skin or especially eyes. Sulfur has the potential to damage plants in hot (90°F and above), dry weather. It is also incompatible with other pesticides. Do not use sulfur within 20 to 30 days on plants where spray oils have been applied; it reacts with the oils to make a more phytotoxic combination.

Epsom Salts are easy to do! Buy some Epsom Salts, what you soak your feet in, at the grocery store, mix a tablespoon per gallon, foliar feed! Foliar feeding is simply sprinkling leaves with your solutions, and works better than applying to the soil! Get a Dramm 5 liter long snouted watering can that has a turnable sprinkler head. That long spout comes in handy, reaching well into your plant! Turn the head so the water shoots up under the leaves then falls back on the tops! The long arc of the handle gives lots of maneuvering ability! Feed your plants once when they bloom, and again ten days later. The results, attributed to magnesium in the salts, are larger plants, more flowers, more fruit, thicker walled peppers! I use this mix on all my Solanaceaes: eggplant, pepper, tomato, tomatillo. Roses love it too!

Baking Soda & Nonfat Powdered Milk for PREVENTION!

The bicarbonate of soda makes the leaf surface alkaline and this inhibits the germination of fungal spores. Baking soda prevents and reduces Powdery Mildew, and many other diseases on veggies, roses, and other plants! It kills PM within minutes. It can be used on roses every 3 to 4 days, but do your veggie plants every 5 to 10 days, or after significant rains, as the plant grows, because these new plant tissues are not yet protected yet by your fungicide. Irrigate well 2 days before use; on a sunny day spray off as much of the PM as you can from plants in sunny locations. A heaping Tablespoon baking soda to a gallon of water, with a 1/2 Teaspoon of a surfactant – insecticidal or dish soap or salad oil, does the job. It is not effective without the surfactant to spread it and make it stick. You can add a liquid fertilizer with it if you want. Cautions: 1) I have had no trouble using it on my veggies, but it may burn the leaves of some other plants, so try it on a few leaves first. 2) Don’t apply during hot midday sun that can burn the leaves. 3) Avoid over use – it is a sodium, salt. For a definitive discussion of Baking Soda usage and research, see https://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/bakingsoda.html. The article is an easy read, nicely summarized, has references, includes cautions and info on commercial preparations. Best of all is to plant powdery mildew resistant varieties:

Cucumber: Diva

Yellow Summer Squash: Success, Sunray, Sunglo

Zucchini: Ambassador, Wildcat

Pumpkin: 18 Karat Gold, Gladiator

Add nonfat powdered milk to your Baking Soda fungicide!Powdered milk is a natural germicide, boosts your plant’s immune system! Apply right away on young bean plants, all your cucurbits – cukes, zuchs, any mildew prone plant. A 1/4 c milk in your gallon of water. Get under those leaves, early morning so the leaves dry and the habitat is less humid.

Also add Salicylic acid, an aspirinto the mix! It triggers a defense response in tomatoes and other plants as well, and stimulates growth! One regular strength dissolved/gallon does the job.

Healthy plants and abundant production are so rewarding! Just take a few minutes to give your plants a boost with these simple treatments! Whether Dramm, or another can, get yourself a good one! Make it easy to get up under those leaves! Otherwise, you are treating only 1/2 your plant!